With the popularity of mobile terminals such as smart phones and tablet computers, mobile Internet access is increasingly accepted by people as a practical function of the mobile terminals. At present, telecom carriers and other service providers provide various service plans. For example, in a service plan, a user prepays a fixed amount each month and then can use data with an upper limit. For example, a user prepays a basic 5 dollar charge and then can use up to 200 M (megabyte) data in a month. In the month, if the final data used by the user each month is less than or equal to the maximum value of the package, the user only needs to pay the normal rate package charge. However, once the final service used by the user each month exceeds the upper limit of the package, the excess part of the service exceeding the upper limit of the package is billed as overcharge. Generally, the charge of the excess part of the service is at a much higher rate than the charge of the normal usage of the package.
In addition, the operators provide various kinds of service plans that can be used together. For example, when the user orders the discount hour package and the normal rate package at the same time, the service used from 0:00 to 10:00 each day is billed by the operator according to the discount hour package, while the service used in the residual time is billed according to the normal rate package. The existing service statistics collection software can only collect total usage; when the user uses multiple traffic packages at the same time, the statistical result is unclear, so that the user cannot correctly obtain the service usage information. Therefore, the existing service usage monitoring technology of the mobile terminal lacks accuracy.
The day to day decisions of many users have to deal with would be more complex than the above example. Normally, a service plan can be quite complicated, and when several plans combined together, they are confusing to users. The situation can be much more complicated when travelling or international phone calls are involved. Therefore, it is desirable to have a method and device that helps the user to monitor each service plan and simplify the decision making process.